In a 2017 interview with The Daily Beast, director James Gunn said of indie film-making: “Let me tell you one thing: there is no more cutthroat place to be than an independent film. Disney is a cakewalk after that—that is no lie.” Despite the unfortunate prescience and timing of this comment, especially given the fallout from Gunn’s eventual firing from Disney and removal from the Guardians of the Galaxy films within the Marvel franchise, his thoughts around navigating the difficulty of the indie film-making landscape still ring true. Small budgets, limited resources and self-imposed deadlines make the set of an indie film a virtual pressure-cooker for hot-seat decisions. Speaking to FilmBunker following a premiere screening and Q&A session at New Farm Cinemas in Brisbane, Australian indie director David Barker peels back the curtain on the creative process behind his feature debut, Pimped. We discuss the #MeToo movement, identity, the nature of philosophical inquiry, how to build tension, time management and even gush over some of our favourite recent films before our time runs out.
At your Q&A in Brisbane last night, you were talking to the crowd about the New Farm Cinemas. Now, I used to live in New Farm when I first moved to Brisbane straight after high school, and I can remember walking up and down Brunswick Street for work, seeing that beautiful, old cinema and being like, ‘Wow, I wish they’d renovate it and turn it back into a functioning cinema complex again.’ So, to start off with, I wanted to hear your take on this a little bit, and what that meant to you to be back in the area again, and not only that, but to be screening one of your own films there.
It had a lot of meaning actually. I’m the type of person [where you’ve] gotta hit me over the head a few times before I get things, and when the screening came up and our distributor was talking about New Farm Cinemas being interested in putting on a Q&A and a preview screening before the release, I just thought New Farm was such a great location. I think this type of film is potentially better in an urban cinema, as opposed to in the suburbs. I could be wrong there, but that’s just what I thought. And then it didn’t hit me until later, that like, ‘That’s New Farm Cinema. I lived around the corner when I was studying film, and we used to go there all the time.’ I went there and I saw Kiss [and the] Attack of the Phantoms. I caught the bus from Mount Gravatt, where I grew up and I must’ve been 14, so many decades ago [laughs]. So, that cinema has a lot of emotional attachment but even more so New Farm itself.
I lived in New Farm when I was studying at art college and then continued to live there after I graduated. And a lot of my friends were into music, into bands, and that’s sort of how I got into film-making—through making music clips for them because I actually studied photography. It was when the Valley was really starting, when it turned from a red light district into a music hub, so really in the formative years where it was sort of turning around. So, it was an incredible time to be on the edge of the Valley in New Farm. Artistically and creatively, you know, I think I was in my mid-20s as a young person, just exploring culture and trying to find out what you wanted to do with yourself. So, coming back here—like, I walked down James Street from my hotel to the cinema and it was a trip, a total trip. Walking past, I was like “Ah, my friend owned that house, my friend lived there.” We used to jump over the fence at the New Farm Primary School and go swimming in there at night, and it was just really, really bizarre in a wonderful way.
I think that’s something that you tap into in the film a little bit, with this sense of urban dislocation, especially between characters like Lewis and Sarah. So, let’s talk about the film a little bit. As director, how do you feel the film has been received, and what’s it been like taking it to FrightFest in London and other festivals and screenings? What’s your post-mortem on the film now that it’s out and people are seeing it?
I’m buoyed by the response of the people that we talk with in the Q&As. You know, it’s a contentious film; it’s got a dark heart. It’s very misanthropic. It doesn’t shine a very positive light on humans [laughs]. So, what I’ve discovered in those Q&As after the screenings is how people react to that. And it’s not quite what I was expecting. Also, I don’t really know what I was expecting [laughs]. But I’ll tell you the truth, I was a little bit anxious at times because, you know, we don’t really pull any punches, there’s a fair amount of violence in it. But yeah, I’ve just been completely overwhelmed by the intelligence of the audience.
We’re getting people in that are asking questions, and the people that I’m talking with after the screenings, you know, they get it. They get it at some base level, and then everyone gets it at their own level too, but then they’re all different. Some of them really tap into the psychological nature of the identity issues at the centre of the film. Others respond more in a visceral way, in terms of it being a thriller with atmosphere and tension. What I’ve learned, from this being my first film, is that there’s this type of feedback which you wouldn’t get from not doing those Q&As. So, it’s been fabulous, and I’ve learned a lot in that as well. The film’s getting really well received so no complaints here whatsoever.
That’s great. And from the other side of that perspective, I really enjoy seeing indie films and having that chance to interact with a director or anyone involved in the production of a film. It gives you an entirely different insight into how those ideas germinate from words on the page and then translate to something on film, something that people can interact with in a visual and auditory way. Now, I came across a review of Pimped this morning, which described it is a “very misogynistic film,” before going on to say that it had warped ideas of rape, trauma and a “disgusting” script. So, I wanted to ask you, have you come across other controversial reactions to the film, where you’ve had to sit down and go, “Wow, I didn’t really think people would see it like that,” or, “I didn’t think people would read this certain aspect into the film”?
It doesn’t surprise me that someone has said that, or [written] about that, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, because I feel like you were either going to like this film or you weren’t. So, that person obviously didn’t like it at all [laughs]. And, you know, that’s their right; whatever they didn’t get from it, fine. I don’t think they’re correct in saying that it’s a misogynistic film, but that’s my opinion. No one on the film is a misogynist. The themes of the film are around identity, toxicity and violence.
I find it interesting with the negative feedback on the film. Those sort of statements, I generally feel come from [men]. Which is weird in a sense, but that’s probably more surprising, and I haven’t really had that from any [women] that have seen the film yet. But I’m sure [there’re] people out there that won’t like the film. We didn’t make the film for everyone; we made it for people that we feel would enjoy that style of film. You don’t make it for yourself, you make it for an audience, and I’m not going to make a film that I’m not happy to sit in front of. I’m very, very proud of what everyone did on that film. And now that it’s out there, it’s sort of like ‘the death of the author’ thing, you know? It’s just out there and people can say whatever they want to say.
I would definitely agree with you. I don’t feel like it’s a misogynistic film at all, and I certainly didn’t get a shred of that reading coming through in my viewing of the film. To contrast your earlier point though, my partner was also at the Pimped screening and in asking her about it, she thought it was an empowering film with a strong undercurrent of feminism running through it. So, I think that really highlights to me the power of film, where it can amplify certain things within a given audience and those aren’t always the same things.
That’s really interesting, yeah. People’s opinions and takes on it come through their own particular vision and their history and what makes them up as a person, and what we’re finding today, definitely more so than ever, is how things become political very quickly. Everyone’s got the power to comment very quickly, and to a wide number of people, through social media.
Looking at the film from writing it—I had this idea, like a 10 page outline, and I sent it to Louise [Mentor, co-writer]. I’d never met Lou before. She was actually introduced to me by my friend Shane, but we never really talked about politics at all. We talked about character the whole time, what drove this particular woman to do these things, and that’s really all we ever spoke about. Or what drove this particular man to do these things. And it’s interesting that once that’s out there, it gets politicised. I guess that’s how the world works, and as the authors of it, you just have to live with it and defend it at times when it needs to be defended. But with a comment like that, I don’t really know. Obviously that person didn’t get it. Or maybe they’re confused with what misogyny means. I really don’t know [laughs].
It’s a film that shows a certain type of male [behaviour], but I can’t see it condoning any of those activities. Like I said, it’s interesting to hear that perspective and also to hear your partner’s perspective, which I hadn’t heard either. This is like the Q&A thing coming back: you get feedback on your film from people that are engaging directly with it, and that’s just super important. Something that I never really saw happening as much as it’s happening now, and completely underestimated the power of that conversation and how it can help us make other films or how it can help us understand what we’ve already [made].
With Pimped, I feel like you’ve kind of tapped into something that really resonates with people, to the level of their own identity, and that’s where these very personal, visceral and, at times, politicised reactions are coming from. I also wanted to bring up another point that you mentioned in the Q&A. The film does have graphic depictions of violence, rape and murder, and there’s a certain tension in film-making in being to separate stylized depictions of those action within a fictional context from real life. To me, it’s a question of realism: namely, how do you accurately depict reality through film and more importantly, fiction? I feel like you’re actively engaging with this philosophy in Pimped, through questions of identity, character and trauma, but it’s still obviously fiction. And perhaps this gives you a lot more space to explore these types of issues. Is that something you would agree with?
It’s a challenge, I guess, for the film-makers to decide what they want the film to be. And, this isn’t a film that is necessarily going to change a lot of things; it’s about experience. It’s about raw emotion and intensity. I think to make a connection with people on that psychological level, I think it’s a great place for us to be in. I mean films like Enemy and Requiem for a Dream and Fight Club, where identity really plays a strong part thematically in those films, I’m [definitely] drawn to. So, it’s great if we can connect with audiences in that way. At the same time, [I want] to have them pushed back in their seats, squirming a bit, and to surprise them with genre tropes of fear and mystery and what’s around the corner.
So it’s difficult then, going back to your point, to decide how much you want to explain things, and how much you want to talk about. Like, okay, here’s a trauma. We want to show how you overcome that trauma. Do you have a responsibility to people to start explaining things more? In the end, you make those decisions and it’s obvious on the screen what we do and what we don’t do. We sort of stick with the fiction, and I think it’s like a novel. Sometimes you can relate to something happening in a novel, in your own world, but it’s still another world that you’re in. I guess that’s really what my aim was, to do exactly that. It is another world, it’s fiction. I mean, I don’t know any psychopaths [laughs].
I’ve studied them, and we’ve done a lot of research on them, but I don’t know anyone that’s as violent as these people. So, it’s total fiction. But what happens in the film, and the experiences that they go through, those characters—that I can relate to. That whole idea of ‘my world is your world,’ relating to that fictional world on some level. That’s the connection I think is important for us as authors, and anything outside that is really a bit more amorphous. It just floats around, and you can pick and take whatever you want.
During the film’s Q&A session, your friend Shayne Armstrong, who was MC for the event, introduced you and introduced the film by describing it as ‘idiosyncratic’. Now, I believe he was referring to its place within indie film and Australian film more generally. Is that something that you would necessarily agree with, and why do you think someone like Shane, who knows you and your work, would think of Pimped as an idiosyncratic film?
Yeah, I’m not exactly sure why he said that. I’d have to ask him [laughs]. I don’t know, but you could probably say that about a lot of Australian films. Look at Snow Town or Hounds of Love or The Loved Ones—I think they’re all quite idiosyncratic in their own way. Would I agree with that [for Pimped]? I don’t know if that’s for me to say. I think that’s more for people who are on the outside looking in. I mean, I’m super proud of the film and what everyone did on it. But in terms of it being peculiar or distinctive or something, I’m not sure…
Well, if I was to offer my own view on that, I was thinking about Pimped within the context of other Australian films I’ve seen. You’ve got this contemporary noir thriller, with a primarily urban Australian setting, but I wouldn’t say that it’s a setting that necessarily has to be Australian. I think the core story and themes are something that’s more universal and able to transcend those geographic boundaries. And I feel like that’s something that maybe audiences outside of Australia could more easily resonate with, because it’s not really relying on a specifically Australian identity to drive the story in the way that a film that’s set in the rural Outback might rely on.
Yeah that, that totally makes sense. I think that’s a really good point you make, and that’s something that one reviewer said when it screened at FrightFest. They said it was good to see an Aussie film that wasn’t set in the Outback, but they were talking specifically about horror films.
I think I’d definitely agree with that sentiment. You ask people from overseas what Australian films they’ve seen and it’s usually like [The Adventures of] Priscilla Queen of the Desert…
Or Wolf Creek. Or The Proposition.
Exactly. All of these like very colloquially Australian films. Whereas I feel like Pimped has a little bit of a remove from that; it’s still obviously an Australian film and there’s a lot of character and a lot of stuff going on there that’s very much Australian too.
I know what you mean. I enjoy them all and I don’t really care where films are set [laughs]. But we do make a lot of films set in the Outback, and some of those—like, The Proposition is an extraordinary film.
What a brilliant film.
Absolutely extraordinary. And what I like about those settings, is that our Outback is really beautiful but also really hostile at the same time. So, there’s an inherent contradiction within the landscape that suits drama, and that particularly helps for horrors and thrillers and the like, which you don’t get in the city. So, we have to exploit the landscape in a different way. With [Pimped], we’ve got a haunted house, but it’s not the house that’s the monster, it’s the guy in it. That’s sort of how we approached it when we were writing about it, thinking about it. And I don’t think it comes across like that in the film, which is good; we didn’t want it to come across like that.
When we found that house, it’s a place that seeps into you through the way it feels. And photographically, it’s a massive place, so the camera really liked it. For me, I studied photography, so I’m a very visual director. That’s first and foremost, you know. It’s so interlocked with drama that I can never separate them, which sometimes can be like a weight around your ankle. Because maybe sometimes you should think about the drama in the story and the characters, but I can’t seem to draw myself away from camera. I shoot my own stuff; I own my own cameras. I just love cameras and what they do, and that house was just so beautiful in a very dark and sort-of mysterious way to look at through a camera, through a lens. So, that was a massive attraction because really, it’s our outback in a sense.
Another thing you mentioned in the Q&A session was in answer to a question around what constitutes a good feature film. Your answer was: “Good films have a unity about them, they’re part of a holistic experience.” Would you be able to expand on that a little bit?
Well, that idea comes from someone else and I’m completely plagiarising. Standing on the shoulders of giants [laughs]. William Ball wrote a book called A Sense of Direction (1984), and it’s really fascinating. It’s about directing, and written for theatre, and it’s a hugely inspiring and useful tool for the art of directing. He talks about three things that art should have. So, that answer comes from his theory, and one of those is unity. And as soon as I read that, I just thought about all the great art I had seen and witnessed, and that was one of the defining things that always struck me as part of the package that you get when you have an interaction with something that gives you that “Wow” moment.
When you’re looking at a painting, it’s a fairly contained interaction with a 3 x 3 on a wall or whatever, or even in an installation. But when you get into performance, especially when you get into film, and these other elements start to come in: production design, sound, obviously performance, and photography. So you need to remain true to the idea and somehow have this unified approach, where the tone of it has this unity about it, the look has a unity about it, the sound supports that unified approach, and so on. You can see it in films when they fall out of that; something happens, or their director or the team didn’t have quite a handle on what they were doing, and I think it’s a hugely important thing. You think about the films that you really love, and they all have it. I’m positive they all have it.
For sure. Like you said, I’d agree that that’s definitely a quality all great art has in common. If I think of, say, albums that I truly love as self-contained works and pieces of art, from front to back, there’s definitely a sense of cohesion and synthesis that goes on with all those individual elements.
Yeah, absolutely. We were talking about it last night. I think Doolittle [Pixies] is one of the greatest albums ever made. And that was a bit of a statement that didn’t go down too well, because out came Bowie and The Beatles and all this sort of stuff. But I just think that Pixies’ album is incredible and that whole album has a unity about it.
I think that also speaks to the importance of collaboration, which you touched on in the Q&A session last night as well, about how you were just very fortunate to have a really strong team. Obviously some incredible lead actors and actresses, as well as Lou as a writing partner. And I think all films would feel like that from the inside, because you’re trying to pull all these different creative inputs, and all these different ideas in one cohesive direction. That must be a huge undertaking. So, as a director David, was that something that you were conscious of while you were doing it, or were you just running on auto-pilot, getting things done and moving on to the next task?
It was definitely a conscious decision from the moment I reached out to Lou. From that moment on, or before that when you’re thinking about, you’re like ‘I’m not gonna make this on my own.’ You need to get the best team you can get. And in the better work that I’ve done in commercials and music clips, it’s all been the better work because of the team. Sometimes because of just timing and a particular song, or an artist and stuff like that. But, so much of it is the team.
I mean the same thing happened when we went to market the film. It’s such a dark art, marketing and advertising. Having been in that field for twenty or more years, making television commercials, we still had to pull together a team, and you’re just going for the best people, basically the best people you can afford. We don’t have a huge marketing budget, of course. But you’re just pulling in people that are actually into the material; that’s the first and foremost thing. They’ve gotta get it, they’ve gotta be into the film or, in the case of the heads of departments, they’ve gotta be into the script.
It goes back I think to this idea we [were] talking about with the actors last night, about this idea of trust. I’ve built up a lot of trust with Josh [Flavell; cinematography] and Bethany [Ryan; production design]. That was just an easy decision to make, because I knew we were going to make a film that looked good [laughs]. You know? With all our skills and what we’ve done before, there was just no way we could have fucked that up really [laughs]. Because they’re very talented people. They have incredible vision and attention to detail in cinematic terms: what happens through the lens, the ‘mise en scene,’ or whatever they call it. What you then have to give them is a good location to do what they need to do. And you know, I can prattle on and go on about the acclaim of the actors, blah, blah, blah. But that team was just everything. The thing that really surprised me wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t know how good they actually were. I already thought they were good. But I believe the film looks like a two, three-million-dollar movie. And it’s the team, you know. It’s the team, and they’re just excelling. They’re at the top of their game, and they’re really talented people, and I just love them to death [laughs].
It’s an awesome job. But, you know, then saying that, it was really fucking hard. I don’t know if I really enjoyed the shoot. There were times there I was thinking ‘Man, this is gonna kill me.’ And it comes back to your original statement about pulling all these people together, like managing all these people; you’ve got so many things coming at you, you’re making a thousand decisions a day. More, tens of thousands. It’s frightening, but what else do you do? You’re in there now, and you’ve gotta finish the film.
Absolutely. If I could zero in on the script and the writing of the film, before you even had to tackle the production aspect, you mentioned how that writing partnership came about with Lou and you had a ten-page outline of the film. One of the things that I’ve read in reviews of the film, is just how ‘taut’ and tightly wound the film seems as a thriller. And you also mentioned last night that every scene that your team shot is in that film, and that there wasn’t anything wasted. So, I wanted to get your perspective from how you wrote the film in terms of what was necessary to tell that story. How did you keep it so tightly-wound and taut? How did you just get it down to the bare bones and trim the fat?
The simplest answer I can give you is just re-drafts. You’re giving that to certain people that you trust in their opinion, and they’re giving you feedback, and then you try and implement that feedback. So, it’s just one draft, and then the next draft. I think we ended up with probably about six or seven drafts in the end, and then it got polished a number of times before the shoot and obviously through the shoot as well. In terms of the tautness… It’s obviously a slow-burn of a film, and that’s part and parcel of the nature of the set-up and the lead-in with the first act. But also, the whole script’s not in the film, in terms of dialogue; we cut bits of dialogue out. It’s a very dialogue heavy film and that’s something that low-budget films generally are, because it’s cheap to shoot dialogue. A lot cheaper than doing a car chase, or someone having a fight or whatever.
So yeah, it was looser than that and it was a bit of a waffle at times, and it was just good script editing, with people going, “Hey, you’re just rabbiting on here, David,” and then we’d cut back and cut back. And then it got cut back again in the editing. At that stage, I mean you just don’t know. No one knows. You’re just sort-of trying things out. You go up to the rehearsal, after you’ve written the script, trying to make it as tight and tense and atmospheric as you can on paper, it being a thriller, and then you take it into rehearsal and you go ‘Wow, that just took so long for them to say that and now everyone’s asleep’ [laughs].
So, then you tighten it up in the rehearsal period, and then you tighten it up on set again. And then Marianne [Khoo]—Marianne’s actually my partner, she’s the mother of my child [laughs]. And she edits the film and she of all people probably surprised me the most with what she was capable of, when she really attacked that dialogue. And it took a few edits to get that tight—like, it was a lot looser—and it was just going back and doing it again and again.
There’s a point in the film where Lewis and Sarah have made their little pact, and they’re taking the body out to bury it. It’s a scene that’s very heavy on dialogue, where Lewis is giving his philosophical thesis statement, on life and interaction and randomness. Sarah says there’s nothing random about rape and that he made a particular choice. Then they’re talking about free will and determinism, and some other very interesting ideas. I wanted to compare that to something that you mentioned in the Q&A, when you were talking about the production of the film, and you were talking about how specific locations in the film weren’t ones that you really planned on. You came across that main house and thought it would be perfect for the film, so you jumped on it. Another person in the Q&A brought up the burial scene in the forest location, and you mentioned that that was something that you guys happened upon as well. So, there seems to be, at least to me, an element of randomness in how the film came about; whether it’s purely by coincidence that you’ve come across these locations or you’ve come across these different aspects that you might not have had complete forethought on selecting. Is that something that you’ve thought about?
I think with film-making, and probably with most endeavours of this scale, you have ideas that go from your brain to words on a page. With it being such a visual medium, with so many contexts, so many pieces that add up, it looks like a very complex thing if you break it all apart. But when you see it on screen, it all seems quite simple. There’s two people in a room, or there’s two people in a car. So that process, which is super complex, it’s just a huge amount of discovery that happens on so many different levels. I don’t know if I would say it’s random, because I feel like that takes too much control away from it, or I’m uneasy with letting go of that control [laughs].
I think with endeavours like this you put yourself in a position. You have a vision, but you also have to compromise that vision, because you don’t have the resources to go, ‘This is exactly how I want this house to be.’ Like, we knew the atmosphere that we wanted to create in the house. We knew that we needed two stories. We knew that Lewis always died that way, at a stairwell, because we needed to have a height that he could hang a rope over. It’s not exactly the way that I saw it in the film, but to find a house that had that exact staircase that was in my mind when I was writing the script, again, you’d have to build that.
So, you’re constantly discovering things, and I think that’s what I love about film-making and the construction process of it. Take maybe the creativity out of it, although it’s implicit, and you’re constructing something and you discover things in that process. For instance, when you talk about Lewis’ discussion about randomness. That was originally a nine-page scene in a car. So, we’re sitting there writing and going, “Yeah, we’ll be able to do that.” But we don’t have much money, and then, you know, it’s gonna end up being three days in a car, you know. Why did we do that? [laughs]. Why not just have them sitting in a café or something?
I thought, ‘Well, they need to get out and bury the body, so we have to have it in there.’ Everyone says, “Don’t have scenes longer than three pages.” They can get fucked as far as I’m concerned, because there are no rules to film-making except you can’t bore people [laughs]. So, it got whittled down to six-pages, and then it got whittled down a little bit more on the edit. And we shot that in a studio. That whole driving sequence, two days in a studio, rear-projected.
Wow.
I never would have thought we would’ve gone down that road. Amazing discovery. I was a little bit hesitant, as I’d taken some rear-projection before. But it was an awesome decision to make, because I could stand outside the car, talk to the actor through the window, instead of on a comms unit from a tracking vehicle, or in the back of the car, or somewhere else. And it’s all part of that process of discovery. It’s just wonderful.
Going back to the idea of ‘the death of the author,’ Pimped is out there now and you’re not entirely in control of how people receive the film. It’s out there to be enjoyed. What are some of the primary lessons or takeaways that you’ve had from this experience? What will you take from it into your next project, into your next feature film?
Oh man there’s so much [laughs]. I don’t even know where to start.
[Laughs.] Alright, top three.
Yeah, the top three. They’re not huge things; it’s not going to completely change the way films are made, because of this massive idea that I came up with. They’re just little things that happened every day, you jot them down so you don’t forget them, and that’s gonna stick in your mind. There are some things that I don’t want to talk about, because they’re really personal to me and my relationships with people. So, I’ve taken them out of the equation.
I think it probably comes back to me not really being a writer. I’m not a Shayne Armstrong, I’m not a Shane Krause, or a Luke [Davies], who wrote Candy. I write because I have to. So, the scripting process is something that I think I learnt a lot on. Also knowing when a film is ready, and when it needs more work. And trusting other people’s input, because you think you know everything obviously, being the arrogant director that I am [laughs]. You think you know more, then these other people come in, and they can really, really help you. So that was a big learning curve. Not that I didn’t think people could help me, but I just opened my eyes and stepped back a bit. Step back a bit and people have good ideas and maybe they’re seeing something that you’re not seeing, because you’re way too close to it. In the scripting, I’d like to have spent more time on the scripting. We wrote Pimped pretty quickly, by my own standard of writing which is really slow. So, in the writing that’s one.
In the filming of it, more time. You know, we shot for 25 days, which is actually pretty luxurious for a low-budget film, but I would have loved another four days. It would’ve just decreased the stress levels. By a lot [laughs]. And also given more time with the actors, less time on writing. You know, it’s a beautiful looking film, but because it’s a beautiful looking film, I lost time with actors and I don’t want that to happen again. So, I need to manage that better somehow on the next film, and that’s definitely something I learned. What I’d like to do is have the time for the writing and the time for the actors.
What else? Marketing, I guess, is an obvious thing I’ve learned a lot about. Just how important that is, and how little you can do with the resources that we had. But we still have an incredible team on this, and they’re just doing an amazing job with the sticks and stones, you know, and seashells [laughs]. I learned a lot about that process, because myself and the distributor are working collaboratively on it. So, I obviously eat up all of the marketing and that’s just been a real eye-opener. Something we wanted to do, because we’ve got our own post-production, when we edited the film in-house at Playground Films, and so we’re creating all the assets for the marketing there, all the video assets and stuff. I don’t know if that’s super interesting for you [laughs], but those are the three things that came out at first.
No, that’s very interesting. At FilmBunker, we try to spotlight as much indie film-making as we can, and especially Australian film-making, so I think these are some things that you took away from the experience, but they’re also things that other people will definitely bring into their own film-making experience as well. Now, to end on something a little bit different, you’re obviously a lover of film, and you mentioned in the Q&A that you’ve seen Pimped so many times now that you couldn’t sit through it. So, I wanted to ask you David, what films have you seen recently that you really enjoyed? What are you watching right now? What are you anticipating? What’s coming up?
Yeah, that’s a good way to finish. Just to clarify though, the reason I go out is not because I don’t want to watch the film. I’m really proud of it. I actually enjoy watching it, because, you know, it’s your baby and it’s like when you’ve got a child, and you just like it when they run around the playground, you just love watching them because they’re beautiful in their own way. And I think there’s obviously a dark heart about our film, but I think it’s beautifully dark, and I enjoy watching it. I just can’t be with other people and watch it. I can’t be with an audience that hasn’t seen it before. That’s just absolute terror, and it’s just not a good experience because I get really anxious.
I believe the phrase you used last night was “torture.”
It is [laughs]. It’s absolute torture. So, recently I guess, in terms of films, there’s been a wide gamut of things. Like you go from Mandy to Roma; I mean, how can you get any more polar ends and extremes of film-making? I thoroughly enjoyed both of them for their own reasons, because they moved me in the ways that those particular films do.
I thought Mandy was an absolute trip. What an incredible film.
Yeah, and then there’s stuff like Suspiria [2018 remake]. It’s funny, it seems to be where my head and heart in film lies, there’s that basket, which is not hardcore horror, but it’s in that genre, I guess. And then on the opposite side, is a film like Roma and then say The Favourite, which I think is an absolute masterpiece of a film. But incredible film-makers definitely have a vision, in their own ways, in telling their own crazy stories.
Absolutely. Well, I just wanted to congratulate you on the film, David. I think it’s definitely something you and your team should be proud of, and I can’t wait to see what you do next.
Thanks. And who knows what’s gonna happen next? But I’m so glad that you came to the cinema. Because you might see a film in a movie cinema and then you might see it maybe on your TV, four or five months later or whatever, and you can see that difference. You can feel that, there’s a massive difference. For me, I’d never gone the other way. I’ve never seen a film on an editing screen, which is sort-of like a TV, I guess, bit smaller really. But I’ve never gone from that to the cinema. And that jump is even greater because it’s an up-jump. With the down jump from cinema to TV, you’re taking some of the cinema experience with you.
So, the step-down isn’t such a big step down. You don’t take anything with you when you go into the cinema, except you obviously know the story and what not, but the step-up is huge. For you to see that in the cinema, I really think that’s part of the reason why people enjoyed this film maybe 10% more than they would if they saw it at home, because it exploits sound design and it exploits image, and it’s made for that environment. So I’m really glad that you came and experienced that in a cinema, because a lot of critics and reviewers don’t do that anymore.
You’re very welcome David, and I’m old enough to remember going to the drive-in cinema with my parents, and curling up in the back of the car to enjoy watching films, and that’s like a whole different experience again, which I really think is lost through streaming services like Netflix and how people digest the majority of films right now. So, I’m a firm believer in actually dragging my arse to the cinema.
[Laughs.] That’s cool. Hopefully drive-ins come back one day, like vinyl will come back.
I certainly hope so. Alright David, well thank you again and I wish you all the best.
Thank you mate. Cheers.
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